Leon Walker said when he read his now ex-wife's e-mails last year, it was out of concern for the well-being of their young daughter.

Now, the 33-year-old Rochester Hills resident is facing a felony charge that he says is an inappropriate misapplication of the law. Prosecutors disagree.

"I feel very strongly that I'll be exonerated," Walker said.

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Walker, who works for Oakland County's Information Technology department, said he began to believe that the woman he married in January 2008 was having a secret relationship with her second husband. Walker was husband No. 3.

She didn't come home one night in May 2009, and Walker said when he checked the phone records, he saw that she was having almost daily contact with her ex.

Walker suspected that his wife was taking their 1-year-old daughter to her second husband's house. He was concerned because his wife had previously accused the man of physically abusing her.

"I started putting more thought into it, (and thought) she was very likely taking our daughter over to the guy's house," Walker said. "So I said to myself, I bet you I can confirm that by reading her e-mail. She kept very simple passwords and she left them in notes and books throughout the house."

Walker also said his wife had previously told him her e-mail password.

He said when he checked her Google e-mail account, he found evidence of his wife's infidelity and that she was taking their daughter and a 9-year-old son from her first marriage around the second husband.

Walker said out of concern for the 9-year-old, he shared the e-mails with his wife's first husband, the boy's father.

Walker's wife, a former county employee, filed for divorce in June 2009. She also contacted law enforcement officials about the e-mails.

On Feb. 1 of this year, a sergeant from the computer crimes unit of the Oakland County Sheriff's Office came to Walker's workplace.

Walker is charged with unauthorized access to a computer, a felony that has a maximum penalty of five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $10,000. He was temporarily suspended from his county job after the charge was filed and then allowed to return to work with restrictions that prevent him from dealing with law enforcement functions in the course of his job.

A trial has been scheduled for Feb. 7.

Defense attorney Leon Weiss says Walker was inappropriately charged under what is essentially an anti-hacking statute.

"I happen to believe that this conduct does not fall under this statute, and that the prosecution is unfortunate, and some might even say ludicrous," Weiss said.

Weiss wrote in a court filing that the statute prohibits unauthorized access to a "computer," "computer program" or "computer system."

"Because an e-mail account hosted by Google Gmail does not fall into any of these categories, the People have failed to state a crime against defendant and their criminal complaint should be quashed," Weiss said.

Walker checked his wife's e-mails on a laptop they both used. He said he purchased the laptop long before he was married for a home-based IT consulting company.

Prosecutors maintain that Walker broke the law.

"The Internet itself is a network," wrote Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Sydney Turner in response to Weiss's filing. "Therefore, inherently an e-mail system is part of a computer network wherein communications are transmitted back and forth between senders from remote terminals ,which comports with the definition of a computer network in (the statute)."

After Weiss filed the motion to quash the complaint, Oakland Circuit Judge Martha Anderson remanded the case back to the district court for further expert witness testimony to determine whether e-mail fits within the definitions in the statute.

Prosecutors wrote that testimony was taken from an Oakland County Sheriff's Office detective who said that e-mail meets the definition of a computer program, and 52-3 District Court Judge Lisa Asadoorian again found probable cause to bind the case back to Oakland County Circuit Court.

The e-mails were brought up in the divorce case.

Michael McCulloch, Walker's wife's divorce attorney, filed a motion about three weeks before Walker was criminally charged asking that the e-mails be ruled inadmissible in the divorce proceedings. The motion, which was denied, accused Walker of violating state and federal laws by reading and sharing his wife's e-mails without her knowledge.

"He didn't have the password," McCulloch said. "If you read the preliminary examination transcript in the criminal case, I believe he told the detective that he guessed the password. I find it highly unlikely that someone would share a password with a spouse you're going to divorce."

Walker said a Friend of the Court counselor in the divorce case recommended that his daughter have no contact with his wife's second husband.

But McCulloch, who is not involved in the criminal case, said an arbitrator reviewed Walker's wife's e-mails "and didn't see much of an issue there."

"In his award, he made no limitation or restriction on (Walker's child's) contact with anybody," McCulloch said.

Walker and his now ex-wife have joint custody of their daughter. The ex-wife has a greater amount of parenting time.

Walker said he has filed a motion to have the arbitrator's award set aside on the basis of fraud by the plaintiff and bias on the part of the arbitrator. He said he is still concerned about his daughter being around the second husband.